Madonna Opens Up About Life with 6 Kids and Her Emotional Adoption Journey: 'It's Complicated — But So Worth It'

Madonna opens up about her life as a mom — and how she’s saving lives in Africa with her charity Raising Malawi. Subscribe now for an exclusive look into the megastar’s life — only in PEOPLE!

Madonna may be the highest-selling female artist of all time, but at home she’s just Mom — or “Mambo,” as the four youngest of her six kids call her.

For this week’s issue, the pop icon, 59, offered a rare glimpse inside her private world, inviting PEOPLE to join her in Malawi on July 11, whenshe opened the Mercy James Centre for Pediatric Surgery and Intensive Care, the nation’s first children’s hospital. A month later, at her home in London, she opened up about her emotional adoption journey, why she’s dedicated to helping the children of Malawi — and her busy, rewarding life as mom toLourdes, 20,Rocco, 17, David, 11, Mercy, 11, and 5-year-old twins Estere and Stella.

Malawi — a beautiful but struggling country in southeast Africa — has become a “second home” for Madonna in recent years. After first visiting in 2006, she foundedRaising Malawi, a nonprofit that aims to educate and support health services for countless orphans and children in the country. It’s also where she met four kids who would change her life forever.

Already mom to Lourdes (with former flame Carlos Leon) and Rocco (with ex-husbandGuy Ritchie), the singer first saw son David Banda at Home of Hope, an orphanage in Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital city. He was a baby battling pneumonia and malaria at the time, and feeling an instant connection, she began the adoption process.

But when she brought him home to London in 2008, the reception wasn’t anything she’d imagined. “Every newspaper said I kidnapped him,” Madonna says. “In my mind, I was thinking, ‘Wait a minute. I’m trying to save somebody’s life. Why are you all s—-ing on me right now?’ I did everything by the book. That was a real low point for me. I would cry myself to sleep.”

Madonna met Mercy James around the same time as David, and adopting her was even more difficult. Because she had recently divorced Ritchie, Malawian officials told her “I was not capable of raising a child,” she says. “Theway I was treated — that sexist behavior — was ridiculous,” adds Madonna, whosuccessfully challenged the refusalin Malawi’s Supreme Court and brought home Mercy in 2009.

“I’ve had some pretty dark moments,” she says, “but I’m a survivor.”

In February, the starbrought home Estere and Stella, orphaned twins whom she met at Home of Hope 2½ years ago. Last summer, she again began the adoption process, which she says was just as rigorous: “Because I’m a public figure, people don’t want to be perceived as giving me any kind of special treatment, so I get the hard road.”

Adds the proud mom: “It’s complicated, but it’s so worth it.”

For much more on Madonna, pick up the new issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.

After seven months, Estere and Stella are acclimated. “It’s like they’ve always been here,” says Madonna of the precocious pair, who have become the stars of her latest Instagram posts.

Moana and Sing play on loop at her home, but when “Holiday” came on during dinner and David told the twins it was one of Mambo’s hits, “they were like, ‘Huh?'” Madonna says.

Of the fact that their mom is the Queen of Pop: “They don’t have a clue,” she says, “and that’s a good thing. I’m just their mother.”

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What’s more, the star — one of the first activists during the 1980s HIV and AIDS crisis — says she felt a pang of déjà vu.

“When the AIDS epidemic first came to New York and I was living on the Lower East Side, my best friend was HIV-positive,” Madonna remembers. “I went to St. Vincent’s hospital because I saw that the gay community was being marginalized in a crazy way that I’d never experienced before. I remember going into the AIDS ward with rows of beds, emaciated people, the smell of death. And just feeling a sense of responsibility and compassion, thinking: ‘How can I help these people, how can I love these people, how can I make them feel better?’ Because everyone was casting them aside and not wanting to touch them.”

Madonna had the same feeling on her first visit to Malawi. “I felt like there was another, deeper meaning and reason to be there — to, again, come to the service of people who have been marginalized by a disease that nobody wanted to talk about in Africa,” she says. “The spread of HIV is so prevalent there because nobody is talking about sex or practicing safe sex — those things are taboo. It was just shocking: ‘This is happening again?”

One of those failed projects was a girls’ academy. After pouring millions of dollars and years of effort into the school, Madonnanixed the project in 2011. She says mishandling of money by Raising Malawi’s former management team led to the project’s demise.

“I’m the biggest philanthropist in Malawi, but I was being treated like a criminal. It’s crazy. But all my work in Malawi’s been like that,” says Madonna, who didn’t give up. “People would say to me, ‘Oh, you’re so naïve — who do you think you are?’ Then I would go, ‘Maybe they’re right. Who do I think I am?’ After a couple days, I’d think, ‘Everyone who’s criticizing me: What are you doing to make the world a better place?’ At the end of the day, you just have to get on with things, if you believe in what you’re doing.”

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Her passion for Malawi and determination to help the people there is inspiring. Her love for her children is more than obvious. People that keep critiscing her efforts in Malawi and spreading cynicism and hatred should look at what they are doing for the world and try harder themselves instead of pouring scorn on someone who is doing so much good for so many.

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Her passion for Malawi and determination to help the people there is inspiring. Her love for her children is more than obvious. People that keep critiscing her efforts in Malawi and spreading cynicism and hatred should look at what they are doing for the world and try harder themselves instead of pouring scorn on someone who is doing so much good for so many.

All this!!!

You can see how happy the kids are and that's because of their mama. She's a great mother!

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Good on her. She deserves to be recognized for this. She struggled and struggled. People made fun of her, told her it wasn't worth it etc etc just like everything else. She proved everyone wrong. As she always does.